Should an 18-year-old convicted of a serious crime have to serve a sentence like life in prison or should the juvenile age be increased in the Florida criminal justice system? We’ll talk about this topic with the wife of a person convicted of a crime at 18 and with a legal expert. The juvenile age in the Florida criminal justice system has a cut-off of 18 years.

One guest, Judith Scully, is a professor at Stetson University College of Law. Professor Scully co-coordinates the Social Justice Advocacy Program, pro bono program and directs the Innocence Initiative at Stetson law. She oversees the Street Law program which educates middle school students in Pinellas County about their legal rights and how to avoid the school-to-prison pipeline.

We talked about how someone would be sentenced differently if she is convicted of a serious crime at age 18 compared with 17-and-a-half, for example.

WMNF’s MidPoont got a letter from an inmate at Hardee Correctional Institute in Bowling Green, Florida. His name is Matthew. Here’s part of what he wrote: “There are a lot of us who caught life sentences between the ages of 18 and 21 and have essentially grown up in prison. Modern brain science has concluded that there is really no difference in brain maturation between a 17 year old and a 20 year old, but the level of culpability and punishment Florida appends to the 18 year old as opposed to [someone who is one day younger than 18] is shameful.”

You might hear the counter-argument that for the purposes of military service or voting, we consider 18-year-olds to have the responsibilities of adults. Though we can also look at a move that Florida made in the 1980s, increasing the legal drinking age from 18 to 21. Presumably that happened because the Legislature decided that 18-year-olds were not as good at making the adult decisions about alcohol that a 21-year old could; should that also apply to the juvenile age in the criminal justice system?

We also expanded the topic to look at the question of what about when people under 18 are charged as an adult. How is that decision made? And are there check and balances. Should it happen at all?

Another guest who joined us by phone was Renee Graves. Her husband, Charles, was convicted of a crime when he was 18 years old.

“In Manatee County, judges sentence whites convicted of felony drug possession to an average of five months behind bars. They give blacks with identical charges and records more than a year.

“… blacks spend far longer behind bars. There is no consistency between judges in Tallahassee and those in Sarasota. / The war on drugs exacerbates racial disparities. Police target poor black neighborhoods, funneling more minorities into the system. Once in court, judges are tougher on black drug offenders every step of the way. Nearly half the counties in Florida sentence blacks convicted of felony drug possession to more than double the time of whites, even when their backgrounds are the same.”

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EVENT/PSA SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Community Announcement GuidelinesSubmitting a written announcement:
Enter the information at least two weeks prior to your event for best consideration. It may take up to a week to put it online, so please be patient. If you submit the event last minute, it unfortunately may not be published. If you submit multiple events not all may be published, but we try! Information must be entered in starred fields; others are optional. There is a limit of 250 characters in the text description. Please do not use exclamation points, or type in all capital letters. Remember to fill out the fields for date, time, and venue, if appropriate for your event. Do not include prices, or any word related to cost, including the word 'free.' YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT MAY BE DECLINED if you include prices. Write as if you were addressing a single person. All input is subject to approval and we reserve the right to edit any and all submissions. Please include the proper website, phone number or email address for people who want further information. If you have a question about your submission, please write help@wmnf.org.
WMNF reserves the right to publish, decline, or edit all Political Action submissions to protect our FCC & Non-Profit status. All the other guidelines for submitting an event apply to Political Actions as well.
If this announcement is for a concert that’s not a benefit for a nonprofit organization, you can contact Laura Taylor to find out about being included on WMNF’s Concert Calendar, on-air and on our website. We have special rates for local bands:
laura@wmnf.org or 813-238-8001 x 132. While we will post some concerts that are posted on the events page, for just a few dollars you can have your event highlighted, add a picture, and be in the concert calendar, which airs multiple times every week.
Community Announcement Guidelines
The Community Bulletin Board at WMNF is offered as a courtesy to non-profit organizations to broadcast events and fundraisers to listeners within the Tampa Bay region. For priority placement on the Community Bulletin Board, you must represent a 501(c)(3) or (4) IRS-designated organization. We will consider other arts and culture events offered free of charge to the public as space allows.
Sorry, WMNF does not do public service announcements for partisan political groups.
Record an announcement:
WMNF 88.5 FM invites nonprofit organizations to record a 30-second public service announcement for broadcast on 88.5. The guidelines are below.
The announcement must be for a registered nonprofit organization. Announcements are recorded with just voice, no music. A person from YOUR organization voices it. Since we’re non-commercial, announcements we can’t do a Call to Action for another organization. So you can’t say “come on down,” “don’t miss it,” “sign up now” or anything similar. But you can say, “You can go to (this website) for more information.” WMNF can’t announce prices, but you can direct people to a website or phone number for more information. And if it’s time-sensitive, we’d want to record that at six weeks before the date, so we have time to get things together and broadcast it for two weeks.
PSAs can be about what your group does and when you meet, or about a specific event you’re putting on. We’ll air one PSA at a time for each group, and the
station reserves the right to refuse announcements.
You can email a draft of your script to nonprofitpsa@wmnf.org . Once your script is ready, we’ll find a good time for you or someone from your group to come to the station and record it.

WMNF is non-commercial community conscious radio – we survive only due to the generosity of listeners like you. Please consider an ongoing monthly contribution and receive annual coupons for swag when you Join the WMNF Circle of Friends.